Why I Still Walk to the Casino
Two miles each way through the city, good exercise before sitting in a dark room for ten hours — and leaves the car at home so I can actually have a drink.
The walk from my place to Rivers Casino is about two miles. I do it when the weather's nice, most Saturday nights when I'm playing. Leave the car at home, walk there, play for a few hours. Usually by the time I'm done it's 2, 3, sometimes 4 in the morning and I'm tired and a little groggy from ten hours of concentration. That's what Uber's for. But I walk to the casino, and here's the thing — since my car's at home, I can actually have a drink at the table without worrying about drinking and driving. That's actually a pretty good reason to walk.
Four miles total, round trip.
Here's what nobody at the poker table talks about: you're about to sit in a dark room for ten hours. No windows. Dim artificial lights. Recycled air. You won't see the sun again until you leave. If you drive in cold — car, sit, play, car, home — you're starting the session off. Blood's not moving. Eyes are shot from screens and fluorescents. You're showing up to a marathon having done nothing to prepare.
Two miles changes that. Gets the heart going. Gets real sunlight. Gets the legs moving after a week of sitting at a desk. By the time I get to the room I'm actually warm. I'm awake without caffeine. I'm present.
The walk back isn't really a walk back — it's an Uber. Session ends at 2, 3, 4 in the morning, I'm tired and a little foggy, and that's exactly when you want a stranger's Toyota Camry to take you home. Two miles does something for the body on the way there. The Uber does something for the body on the way back.
Not about burning calories. It's about transitions. You're not going straight from the table to the car to the couch. You're giving yourself a buffer. Forty minutes of moving through the world, seeing actual things, breathing actual air. By the time I get home I feel like I ended the night instead of just stopping it.
I started doing this after noticing the drive home always felt worse than the drive there. Same distance. Same route. But the post-session drive was longer and more exhausting. The walk solves that. Plus it's good exercise and Philly weather cooperates maybe six, seven months a year.
I'm the only one who walks, probably. Random guy walking to the casino at 6pm on a Saturday with his coffee. Probably looks a little weird. By the time I get there the Saturday night table is the same one I wrote about in Saturday Night at River's — the Capital One VP, the 55-year-old, the GTO kid, Buddy A. Same table, same people, same Saturday.
To each their own.